Sound alarm

[Stan Rogers]

"
Issue here is that I personaly know few players who quit game due this because they couldn't defend aggainst it if they didn't run under mindbar which ate most of their profits buying credits and mindbars and on the end they earned less than pirates."


Aye...that could happen. Hopefully they went over to farmville to enjoy their empire building exploits. I will have to say though, if that happened, they were ill prepared for merchant life and if they were going to draw undue attention to themselves, they deserve to wear a mindbar full time or learn to not draw undue attention to themselves.

I'm going to say -1 as well but it really does not make a huge difference in gameplay. You would still have to be on the guild main page to hear the bell and to make it chime when you were on some other page is really going way too far.

On a similar note, I would like to erase a voodoo notification after I read it as, after a while, they get to be page clutter for the life of the voodoo and easy to miss additional notifications.
The FFJ card is an expensive card to use and to hamper it further with chimes when cast, or any voodoo for that matter. IMO is a little over the top.

[Sebena]

Well, if they were used to games where you could always avoid PvP, if you so desired, then no wonder. This is, fortunately, not such a game. You should never feel safe here. Anyone risk being attacked at any time. However, due to the vast incomes from trading, it's still profitable even if you're plundered every now and again. And you can always hit back. Or attack other traders, if you think that is so easy and profitable.

No they were expirienced in PvP but this mechanic is in the rank same as bully but as someone who start game as a mercenary I can understand your issue with this change, but if you take it merchants are still in lower tier than pirates. Pirates need to rebuild few ships 5-10 while after each raid merchants need to rebuild 30-40 or even more ships depending how many they had and lose more gold and need week if not even more to rebuild and hit positive 0 to return what they lost while pirates rebuild themselves in a day or two. Try being merchant with 250+ ships and suffer from a raid or two and you'll finally understand that it's not all fairytail being merchant we don't just sing songs and drink rum. But as someone who has no exp in it you can't understand what I am talking about

[Sebena]

"
Issue here is that I personaly know few players who quit game due this because they couldn't defend aggainst it if they didn't run under mindbar which ate most of their profits buying credits and mindbars and on the end they earned less than pirates."


Aye...that could happen. Hopefully they went over to farmville to enjoy their empire building exploits. I will have to say though, if that happened, they were ill prepared for merchant life and if they were going to draw undue attention to themselves, they deserve to wear a mindbar full time or learn to not draw undue attention to themselves.

I'm going to say -1 as well but it really does not make a huge difference in gameplay. You would still have to be on the guild main page to hear the bell and to make it chime when you were on some other page is really going way too far.

On a similar note, I would like to erase a voodoo notification after I read it as, after a while, they get to be page clutter for the life of the voodoo and easy to miss additional notifications.
The FFJ card is an expensive card to use and to hamper it further with chimes when cast, or any voodoo for that matter. IMO is a little over the top.

If they seeked that much of attention as you think I would attack them myself but they weren't they just traded peacfully and only sin which they had is having couple hundreds of ships.

[Kart]

The type of attacks Wolfie is bringing up is an advanced form of attack. He has not explained it completely here and I certainly don't want to teach pirates who don't know the technique how to attack more effectively. To be honest, I don't think the type of attack that he is most concerned about would be helped by a warning bell, buzzer or gong. By the time you hear the alarm it would be over. You would probably never even see the evidence of the attack until the player was being hit with 50-60 attacks. In fact if you didn't look at the guild battles you probably wouldn't even know the attack was going on no matter how alert you are.

As far as the comments about our guild being hard to attack, there are those who know how and those who try. Yes, we do have a very good defensive system set up. It was set up by design that way. However, any defense must have time to respond to defend. I know pirates are against any thing that helps the merchants and they always cry the game is too slanted towards the merchant. In this case there really should be a counter to this specific kind of attack. I congratulate those who are able to make this type of attack and be successful at it. There is no defense for it if you do it right. In this game there has always been balances struck. I would suggest the only balance for this kind of thing would be, as it has been mentioned before, a deadline on how close to the top of the hour you can cast. I don't think I need to explain farther how it works. If you are online and see it happen often you cannot respond, there simply is no time.

I am proposing that voodoo which goes into effect at the top of the hour or at upkeep not be allowed to be cast after it is one minute until the top of the hour. I know most will oppose this but to me this is the only real way for a balance on this. If not one minute, then other amounts of time could be discussed.

[Most Lee Harmless]

My view is, its exploiting a glitche in the game : cleverly, yes, but its still a glitche when the stated maximum hourly effect ( i.e. from the stacking limit) can be almost instantly doubled in this way thus giving no time to respond : the loophole needs closing, is my opinion.

[not a pirate]

-1 ~~~~~


Give every pirate a free lvl 10 SOTL and nobody would attack you again, Wolfie! Until then, don't complain about how pirates attack in Merchant's Glory! +1 Danger per Hour can be read wrong, but it is really saying per existing gametime hour, so even if you cast is 15 seconds before, it still works as the current hour has not expired yet.

[ChaIbaud]

-1 u make the gold, u run the ships, u carry the risk and guild activity rarely involves consequences in my experience.. all u do is clear voodoo and this is capable by seeing the active voodoo on guildmates

[Admiral Nelson]

I would not class the strategy as a loophole in the system. I would class it as an advanced strategy and understand of the game mechanics.

However, if this gets "closed" because of two guys repeatedly doing it ( Mainly Roberts in his hey day ) this is like the 25 fame limit one guy repeatedly did it ( Capt Dungeness and it was blocked off) . As you are out to get the pirates of Avonmora : The only attacks you guys receive is the "Blind fugitive of Justice" as Hostile Natives do not work at all due to your defensive nature. As you so rightfully said in your post, dear Kart.

If this gets closed,there would be no way to properly attack you guys ( SSTG ), Karkar and me tried Hostile Natives and as you guys know, we wasted 40 Hostile Natives, and even then we did not profit from such, this strategy is confirming a target, but we try for it not to happen over and over again, as that would really be a piss-take ( Do it daily ). It is a strategy just as Skyhawk's only to a different division . Most of the time one does not profit as well as you thought. Recently I did the fugitive of Justice on Guluere, it worked : I only claimed 2 million though, and the 3 FoJ cost me 24 credits. so really, if it was not for me stealing a ship, that raid would not of profited.

So by casting FoJ like this it is more of a risk for several players here are a few reasons why:
> If the player has Fugitive of justice, you would of refreshed for a whole min for nothing, as it would bounce off the walls.
> The player may not be carrying a fortune , a measly 2 million of which the pirate will not profit from.
> It could get caught : You see what you guys dont realize is, you should refresh your page constantly at the guild discussion, whilst having a voodoo tab open with a serenity ready to clear, even if you removed one, the FoJ would not work the target would have to wait until the fleets arrive, which can take ages... It can be removed, hard , yes. Impossible, no.

I would say, it is up to the player : You guys know of the strategy so why don't you repeatedly refresh the page when the min closes in to see?

However, as Captain Jack so rightfully says the Merchant base is larger then the Pirate base. So really this means the Pirate has lots of targets to fiddle around with - You can clearly see in Port Battles, I have not just been attacking you guys. I even said to you guys, my code does not let me attack the same guild within 3 days/a week. I have not decided yet, but I would like to say this : I give you guys ample warnings, I cast spy networks 3 days before: I cast a flood a min before to test and if that players online, bad days for me.

Recently, I have not seen you guys "lit up" on the port battles, so you must be referring to the attack I did on Sackett recently. If so, it is very sad that you guys cant handle one well executed raid.

[Haron]

I don't see this as a glitch, nor as a loophole. Several things happen at the top of the hour, or at server update (server midnight). One such effect is the effect of FFJs. It's only logical to use the FFJs as close to the hour, then. The closer, the better. The element of surprise is vital.

The same goes for lots of other stuff. If you're fighting to become king, you need to act just before server midnight, because that's when it's decided who's gonna be king the next day. So if you're not able to be on at server midnight; tough luck. You also need to be online at server midnight in order to do a "double ambush" - spend 10 just before the update and 10 just after.

This is how things work. I see this strategy as the only natural consequence of the rules, not a "loophole". It's more or less the only way to attack large traders. And it's not like it's impossible to defend against, either. You just can't do it through guildmates watching you and casting serenity. But there are other ways. More expensive, perhaps, but still. If you run huge fleets and make huge profits, expect huge risks - or spend the money to defend yourself. Like always, if you don't want the risk, run safer, but then you'll get a smaller profit, of course. I think most players will find, though, that running the risk usually is worth it - it's cheaper to be plundered every now and then than to take sufficiant measures. But there is always a choice to do so, for those who rather want to reduce the risk of being plundered.

[Grimrock Litless]

Why not just change the voodoo its self?